Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-317) and indexes.

Machine generated contents note: 1.Introduction: Markets in Economics and History
1.1.Markets, Their Historiography, and Some Major Assumptions
Some Assumptions and Received Wisdom
1.2.On the Modernity of Markets: The Verdict of Recent Historical Research
Recent Studies on the Rise of Factor Markets
Recent Historical Literature on the Relation between Markets, Wealth, and Freedom
1.3.A New Approach to Markets: This Book
Elements Investigated in the Book
1.4.Cases of Market Economies
Possible Cases of Market Economies
The Cases Investigated in this Book
2.Markets in an Early Medieval Empire: Iraq, 500-1100
2.1.The Rough Contours of Economic Development
2.2.Social Revolts and the Growth of Factor Markets from the Fifth to the Mid-Eighth Century
Social Revolts and Societal Balance
Land and Lease Markets
Labourers and Labour Markets
Credit and Financial Markets
Contents note continued: 2.3.Dynamic Factor Markets and Growing Social Inequality from the Late Eighth to the Tenth Century
Accumulation and Effects in Land and Lease Markets
Free Labourers and Growing Number of Slaves
2.4.Long-Run Effects on Economy, Politics, and Society from the Ninth to the Eleventh Century
The Chronology of Economic Decline
Causes of the Economic Decline
3.Markets in Medieval City-States: The Centre and North of Italy, 1000-1500
3.1.The Emergence of Factor Markets in the Eleventh to Thirteenth Century
A Context of Relative Equity
The Early Rise of Land and Lease Markets
The Early Rise of Labour and Financial Markets
3.2.Organization, Context, and Effects of Dynamic Factor Markets, Early Fourteenth to Mid-Fifteenth Century
The Mezzadria System
Increasingly Distorted Labour Markers and Coercion of Labour
3.3.The Changing Social Context of Markets: Power and Property in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Contents note continued: The Growth of Burgher Landownership
Growing Financial Markets and Inequality of Wealth Distribution
Impotent Revolts, Professional Soldiers, and Growing Power of Market Elites
3.4.Effects on Economy, Agriculture, and Demography
The Regional Variations
Wealth and Elite Dominance
4.Markets in Late Medieval and Early Modern Principalities: The Low Countries, 1100-1800
4.1.The Social Context before and during the Emergence of Factor Markets, from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century
4.2.The Emergence of Factor Markets in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Century
Labour Markets
Money, Credit, and Capital Markets
4.3.The Functioning and Effects of Dynamic Factor Markets from the Fifteenth to the Mid-Sixteenth Century
Accumulation through Land and Lease Markets
The Further Growth of Labour and Capital Markets
The Social Effects of Extensive and Dynamic Factor Markets
Contents note continued: 4.4.Effects of Dynamic Factor Markets from the Mid-Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century
Growing Economic Inequality
Growing Political Inequality
Stagnation of the Economy and Decline of Welfare
5.Epilogue
-Markets in Modern States: England, the United States, and Western Europe, 1500-2000
5.1.England and Its North American Colonies, 1500-1800
The Rise of Factor Markets to Dominance
The Social and Political Context
Dominant Factor Markets
The American Colonies
England as the Leading Economy
5.2.The Decline of England and the Rise of the United States, 1800-1950
Inequality, Counter-Reaction, and Stagnation in England
Freedom, Equity, and Rising Factor Markets in the United States
5.3.The Western World Brought in Sync and Dominated by Factor Markets, since 1950
Northwest Europe Brought in Sync with the American Cycle
Contents note continued: 6.Conclusion: The Fundamental Incompatibility of Market Economies with Long-Run Prosperity, Equity, and Broad Participation in Decision Making
6.1.The Cycle
The Positive Phases of the Cycle
A Closer Inspection of the Negative Phases of the Cycle
6.2.The Cycle, Its Specific Aspects, and Theories of Long-Run Development
Market Economies and Inequality
Possible Counterbalances and the Role of the State
Financial Markets and Capitalism
Rise and Decline
6.3.The Cycle in Time and Space
Early Market Economies and Their Decline
Urban Centres and Rural Hinterlands
Regional Differences
The Growing Scale and Influence of Market Cores.

The Invisible Hand' offers a radical departure from the conventional wisdom of economists and economic historians, by showing that 'factor markets' and the economies dominated by them - the market economies - are not modern, but have existed at various times in the past. This work analyses three major, pre-industrial examples of successful market economies in western Eurasia: Iraq in the early Middle Ages, Italy in the high Middle Ages, and the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. It then draws parallels to England and the United States in the modern period. These areas successively saw a rapid rise of factor markets and the associated dynamism, followed by stagnation, which enables an in-depth investigation of the causes and results of this process.